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Please Help New to Pano Work - Trouble with Level during rotation

04-03-2013, 08:37 PM

I posted earlier - looking for input if anyone is using the R10 (getting my feet wet with pano work) and I am having difficulty finding the tripod head that best works with R10? One that will remain level during the rotation for the 360'.

Having trouble with leveling all head are the same. You only have to level the first shot. The bubble, which is very sensitive, moves around during your shots around. So only level once: the first shot.

What do you mean with your tripod head? Any tripod that's high enough to look through the viewfinder without bending your back, has a center column, and a normal head.

Comment

Thank you for responding. I have been using the approach of leveling first and not worrying about the level bubble drift during rotation, however, I am working with Google+ to upload my pano's and am forced to use their proprietary software for stitching. There is a problem where my last pano failed with stitching error's where there were many vertical lines in the scene that did not line up. It was in a large commercial bakery many metal tables, racks, and stacked baking sheets. I would like to resolve the problem of losing level around the rotation of the axis. I was using an tripod head with a grip and ball assembly which I determined was the primary contributor of this issue.

I am not new to photography - and primarily work in architectural photography. I love the beautiful pano photography that I have seen from visiting some of the web sites of the members of this forum and feel very inspired. That being said - my NN R10 looks like the baby of all the gear. My head is swimming with the language of Nadir and Zenith. Any help or direction would be greatly - greatly - appreciated ... T

Comment

The panorama head does not have to be level. You can totally ignore the bubble level and then level the panorama during the stitching to get all the vertical features truly vertical. Indeed, some panoramas are shot with the head tilted over by 90 degrees when shooting the inside of a car by using the head on a pole poking through a side window. How accurately the images align with each other will be completely unaffected by how accurate the levelling is. If you have stitching errors, they are nothing to do with levelling - always provided you do not adjust the levelling between shots. Autopano Pro and PTGui both provide facilities for levelling the panorama. It takes less than a minute. See this tutorial for PTGui: http://www.johnhpanos.com/levtut.htm
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John

Comment

Thank you John for your input and response. I have been to your site, and have book marked it to go through your tutorials. The biggest problem is that I have no control over stitching because it is completed on the Google end, I want to purchase my own software to work independently of Google. That being said, since I am using the Nodal Ninja R10, after looking at your site, I believe the problem may be caused by Parallax rather than being off level. I have a plate installed from NN that is adjusted for the Canon 8-15mm lens, perhaps this needs adjusting? T

Comment

The R10 GTP with stop plate "103" is pre-calibrated (LRP45X at 1.8) . The NPP setting out of box should be fine for most situations. However, fisheye lenses do not have a single fixed NPP. The calibrated NPP is adjusted for the regions near the horizontal plane of the camera. For regions near the zenith and nadir, parallax may still appear. However, objects near these regions should be quite far away from camera and most stitcher should be able to compensate it. The Google Stitcher is very crude compared to PTGUI. I suggest you to try PTGUI to see if it solve your problem. If it does, you can report to Goggle to ask them fix the stitcher.
The instability of ball head and tripod can also be a source of NPP errors. Try to remove the ball head or use a stronger one.
You can also check where parallax reveals in the pano. Then place your camera farther away from this region. You can also put this region in the center of your image so that they are not subject to stitching and hence parallax.
Next time, you see scenes of lots of structured lines in some region, put them in one image. Take 2-3 more panos with different directions.
Well, the limitation of Google Stitcher is more a problem than the hardawre.
BTW, can you screen capture the problematic regions so that we have a better understanding of the problem.